The Daily Show: The Vagina Ideologues

When President Obama’s administration said the new health care law would require religious hospitals and other institutions to include contraceptive coverage in their insurance plans, it set off a firestorm among Catholics.

They are men of God; that money is not to be used for contraceptives. It’s to be used for out-of-court altar boy settlements and priest relocation costs.

So how does Obama plan to save a religious hospital from having to pay for one of its lady doctors’, you know, mischief?

“If a woman’s employer is a hospital or charity that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company — not the hospital, not the charity — will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge. … No religious institution will have to provide these services directly,” Obama said.

Well there you have it; compromise made everybody happy. Wrong! A concerned Sean Hannity convened a diverse panel of experts on the subject of contraception: Catholic men, Baptist men, Jewish men, black men, white men — absolutely everyone who might have something to say on women’s health.

Where you might see a disagreement on bureaucratic details over health care benefits, the world’s holiest sausage fest saw something much bigger — a war on religion. I’ve got to hand it to these guys on imagination. First wine becomes blood, now insurance reform becomes war. Pretty dramatic.

Do some Christians face persecution today? Absolutely, in Egypt and China. Believe me, the Christian guy making bricks in a Chinese forced labor camp would love to be on “Hannity” complaining about $20 co-pays for Ortho Tri-Cyclen. So you’d think this panel wasn’t actually equating themselves with actual persecution and war.

“Martin Niemoller said during the Nazi era in Germany that ‘I didn’t speak up when they came for the Communists because I wasn’t a Communist,’” said Dr. Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

You wanna do the Nazi dance? As for your slippery slope, Hitler didn’t start small. His deliberate annihilation of a religion didn’t kick off with insurance reform.

Lighten up. America isn’t Nazi Germany, and the secret police aren’t coming for you. Hell, even the IRS isn’t coming for you. Our government hates religion so much it lets them keep $100 billion a year in offerings tax free. Persecute my a-- like that.

Here’s how non-persecuted you are. I live in New York City, the world capital of godless secularism. But even here we’ve carved out huge zones in front of houses of worship where only religious vehicles can park.

You how hard it is to find a parking space in Manhattan? The only proof New Yorkers accept as the existence of God is when you find a spot on your own block. Meanwhile, religious houses get 50 feet of curb all to themselves.

You’ve confused a war on religion with not getting everything you want. I don’t let my kids eat ice cream every night; they wish I did. But even they know that doesn’t make me the Hitler of ice cream.